Low Graduation Rates Among Black Athletes

By The Associated Press

March 16, 2016

Young black men playing basketball and football for the country’s top teams are graduating at lower rates than other black male students at the same colleges — despite having financial and academic support that removes common hurdles preventing many undergraduates from earning a degree, a new report has found. While 58 percent of black male undergraduates at the 65 colleges in the Power 5 conferences obtained degrees within six years, 54 percent of black male student-athletes at the same schools graduated, according to an analysis of the 2014-15 academic year by the University of Pennsylvania researcher Shaun Harper.